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If I Knew how to Speak, I Wouldn’t be a Writer.

Well, this was an eventful weekend. I attended the PNWA literary contest and I learned several things, mostly about myself but also about the world at large.

The first is… I’m not crazy; I’m just a writer. Having met other writers it has suddenly clicked that all those things other people give me ‘that look’ for…are things all the other writers do too. It was so liberating to stand in a room with people who understood things like ‘I don’t know where my book is going now. My characters refused to do what I wanted.’

The second is… smartphones are really fragile. Like ridiculous. Standing in the bathroom this morning my cell slipped from my exhausted fingers to the tile. Now I am not 80,000 feet tall. It did not fall from the roof of a building. From my hand to the ground. Even if I was holding over my head (which I wasn’t) that’s what? Just a little over six feet? Shattered the screen and I must now make an e-bay trip to see if I can avoid paying $400 + for a new one.

The third is… I’m not nearly as bad a loser as I thought I was. I was really worried that as a finalist in the contest I was going to be super upset when I lost (yes that is how I thought of it.) But when the awards came I found I was almost as excited for several of the other finalists as I was for myself. I found myself calculating the odds that either me or the two others I was rooting for in my category would place. 9 finalists. 2 winners…and discovered it was actually pretty good odds. Well, I didn’t place, but one of the others I was gunning for finished first. And despite my apparently compulsively low opinion of myself I was legitimately happy.

I keep emotionally poking myself trying to dig up some of that gooey self-hatred I expected and nothing’s there. I am just happy to have met the amazing people I did and happy that such deserving people won. Could it be I’m actually not a raving bitch deep inside?

The fourth thing is… I really need to work on my public speaking skills. And by that I don’t mean standing up in front of a crowd and speaking but literally speaking in public. Every agent and editor I talked to at the conference the first thing out of their mouths was ‘Are you nervous?’

And while I guess consistency is good, I’m not sure that I want to be remembered as that ridiculously nervous girl who can’t talk if there are more than two people in the room. And while I know that the spoken word isn’t my forte I probably shouldn’t sound like I have the vocab of a five year old… its just not going to sell me successfully

I intended to take a picture of all the beautiful author and agent/editor cards I got at the conference. But if you’ll refer back to point two, I no longer have a working camera. So Instead, I’ll give you a random picture of my dog running. You’re welcome.